November 6th, 2010 / 7:00 pm
Random
Nick Antosca
Random
ZSNYRB
Zadie Smith writes with mixed feelings and a note of condescension in the New York Review of Books about The Social Network, a movie I saw four times in the theater. (Enough times to know that she misquotes the dialogue.) From the opening scene it’s clear that this is a movie about 2.0 people made by 1.0 people, she writes, and it does its job so well that it feels more delightful than it probably, objectively, is. Mercifully she ignores the tedious controversy over the film’s alleged misogyny in favor of a nuanced analysis of its generational significance. Remember half a decade ago, when you’d meet someone and one of you would say, “Are you on Facebook?”
Tags: the social network, Zadie Smith
new york times review of books, really?
my bad
I liked the part where Smith took great pains to point out that she uses “heavily punctuated, fully expressive, standard English sentences” in her text messages. It’s a fucking text, Zadie. Get over yourself.
At least Zadie Smith has a lawn, zork. As a matter of fact, the more I read your post (78th time), the more I think you have lawn-envy. Perhaps you have no lawn. Perhaps you just have an alley, zork, a dark one, out of which weird noises are emanating, grunting mostly, but also the snickering of vermin, “thought vermin” that is, zork, and these thought vermin have cell phones, and they’re texting you, zork, and they’re agreeing with you about your 2,000-word dissertation in the HTMLGiant comments’ section, and they’re saying, “Oh, yeah, zork, LOL, you show Zadie what’s what,” meanwhile Zadie is also walking from the NYRB headquarters through your alley, zork (what a coincidence of urban planning), and she’s shivering, and pouting, and as you approach her, she’s begging you, zork, she’s begging you and Nick Antosca to not get any closer, because you’re impinging on her importance, her fucking writerly importance, zork, Nick. Zork. Nick! Zoooooooork! You’ve done it.
You’ve really done it.
… so do I. I don’t think I’ve ever used “u” for you “2” for to/too/two (unless speaking of funds), lol, rofl (not since AOL days, when I was like in 3rd grade) or any of that shit. I honestly would use caps more except its a pain in the ass. Unless I’m sending a text online. She’s not stuck up, she’s just a fucking writer.
does she have kids? 10-year olds can’t understand a text written in proper English
Oh, I’m more than aware that Smith is a “fucking writer.” But I think the pride in her insistence on verbose, grammatically correct texts speaks to fundamental insecurity with contemporary digital culture. The entire tone of her piece is saturated in a bizarrely “Kids these days!” defensiveness. Though she admits that she’s a “software idiot”, she comes off as really uninformed about what computers and the Internet actually are and what they are capable of. Look at the way she frames everything in goofy “1.0-versus-2.0” way. I think a telling passage comes from her view of cell phones, where she says that, for her, cell phones are just “a new medium for an old form of communication”. I’m sure she views the Internet in the same way, where it’s a new medium for an old form of communication, namely social interaction. In this view, one can easily see online identities as reductive of “authentic” real-life identities.
However, engagement with online social media is an extension of one’s social identity, not a reduction of it. The problem with Facebook’s changing privacy policies is that they encroach on people’s carefully constructed and established online presences. Smith claims that “In real life we can be all these people on our own terms, in our own way, with whom we choose.” This is patently ludicrous. The reason that it’s a problem that “your Aunt Dora could suddenly find out you joined the group Queer Nation last Tuesday” is precisely because in real life we cannot be who we are on our own terms. Teenagers most of all. But it is precisely not in real life, but rather online, that one can create an extension of their social identity, exactly on their own terms. You can choose your name, your avatar, what message boards you hang out in. You can be four or five different people if you want.
The problem with Facebook is that it discourages exactly the type of Web 2.0 interaction it purports to be. Facebook is trying to monopolize user experience of the Internet in the same way AOL did in its heyday. And for most people, unfortunately, that’s not a problem. They see the Internet, and Facebook, the same way Smith does: as a new medium for an old form of communication. While that is true for Facebook (it truly is reductive about online interaction), it’s not true of the Internet. The Internet isn’t a medium; it’s an environment of interactive networks. It has fundamentally changed social, political and economic interaction. Or rather, due to accelerating rates of technological progress, it is constantly changing those things.
Smith’s criticism of the decline of proper grammatical use in texting is more than just snobbish pedantry; it’s a vain attempt to reassert the importance of her position as an “Important Writer!” in the face of its growing irrelevance. People on HTMLgiant should be well attuned to this. Look at the decline of the publishing industry. If I can co-opt Smith’s phrasing, the publishing industry is “utterly 1.0”. We all know this. What we don’t know is what’s next. I think the key line in The Social Network comes when Zuckerberg refuses to open Facebook to advertising at an early stage, because, he says, “We don’t even know what it is yet.”
Smith, along with a lot of other people, view the Internet as this reductive medium, where everything’s sort-of like real life, but online. That’s not what the Internet is, and, while I dislike Lanier (I find him to be the literary equivalent of taking some bong rips and watching Hackers in your dorm while wearing a Che t-shirt), he does make a good point about this. People’s reductive approach to the Internet creates a “locked-in” effect where we fail to see the true mutability and possibility of digital technology. We see this with the disastrous attempts to adapt old publishing models to the web.
I’m sure that Smith is successful enough that she doesn’t have to rely on the Internet as a writer, and I think that really blinds her to the function of digital environments. What Nick sees as condescension, I see as defensiveness, and what he sees as “nuanced analysis of its generational significance”, I see as a grouch yelling for the damn kids to get off her lawn.
At least Zadie Smith has a lawn, zork. As a matter of fact, the more I read your post (78th time), the more I think you have lawn-envy. Perhaps you have no lawn. Perhaps you just have an alley, zork, a dark one, out of which weird noises are emanating, grunting mostly, but also the snickering of vermin, “thought vermin” that is, zork, and these thought vermin have cell phones, and they’re texting you, zork, and they’re agreeing with you about your 2,000-word dissertation in the HTMLGiant comments’ section, and they’re saying, “Oh, yeah, zork, LOL, you show Zadie what’s what,” meanwhile Zadie is also walking from the NYRB headquarters through your alley, zork (what a coincidence of urban planning), and she’s shivering, and pouting, and as you approach her, she’s begging you, zork, she’s begging you and Nick Antosca to not get any closer, because you’re impinging on her importance, her fucking writerly importance, zork, Nick. Zork. Nick! Zoooooooork! You’ve done it.
You’ve really done it.
Am I to understand that the substance of your comment is predicated upon the illegitimacy of my position? How dare I, a lowly anonymous commentator on a mere WEBSITE (!), dare to reproach the respected writer who has published in a legitimate PRINT publication?!?! (Note: I actually subscribe to the New York Review of Books and have no problem with it.)
To be honest, I’m certainly being less than fair to Smith. But I feel that attitudes like yours are exactly the reason that its near impossible for a writer to earn their living from solely writing these days. One would think that the Internet would provide a perfect platform for writers to connect directly with their audiences (to a degree this is true), but I think that a major hurdle to profitability for such a venture is the notion of legitimacy. The simple fact is that major publishing houses have accesses to large markets that online writers simply don’t. One reason for this is that major publishing houses do not, and have no incentive, to view online markets (websites, blogs, indie presses, self-publishing circles, etc.) as equal, viable sources of legitimate published content. This, in turn, results in a consumer who is disinclined to pay a fair market price for content comparable to print content. Why should I pay as much for an e-book as a physical book? An e-books just a bunch of ones and zeroes! Or, why should I pay you for your self-published book or online content? You’re not a real writer, you just publish online!
As long as people, Zadie Smith included, view the Internet as merely a lesser, reductive form of “real life”, online publishing will never gain the legitimacy it needs in order to be profitable. And I think this is very much an issue of perspective or attitude. Even if major publishing houses get consumers to pay market prices for online content (i.e., pay for reading the New York Times online, pay more than $9.99 for an e-book, etc.), I don’t think this will automatically help the situation of freelance writers or indie presses.
I think there needs to be a major shift in the public’s perception of the Internet from an ancillary or reductive simulacrum of “real life” to a fully integrated part of daily life. Smith, especially, develops a sort-of “real life vs. digital life” narrative. Why the dichotomy? Why can’t we have a syncretic view of an individual interacting with equally legitimate physical and digital environments. Now, I’m no “post-humanist” and don’t necessarily think this an overall good thing, but it’s inevitable. The development of the Internet has taken some distressing, primarily corporate turns, but it’s global reach is so extensive that no one can stop this train. Might as well get on board and make some money off it.
Check this out: I ain’t a snob. I agree with your assessment that those who view using “u/2/etc etc etc” online can sometimes be snobbish, but what of those who aren’t snobs but despise the ailments the digital age has introduced?
But let me say: publishing’s decline is viewed incorrectly. People hear and read the word decline and automatically think of a “diminishing into nonexistence” or until “minuscule importance”. What is really occurring with publishing is that it is balancing with the new digital front. Balancing. Such as the music industry — cd’s have not vanished the same way as dvd’s have not vanished in lieu of digital copies of our favorite films.
But I’d rather not compare those to literature fully. They aren’t the same, right? Books date back further than cds/dvds/records.
What will happen is this: Publishing will balance its digital presentation with its physical one. There won’t be as many books printed, and the publishing companies (big wigs people, the smaller operations will/have already likely figured out how to properly adjust, for many reasons) will force everyone to be scared like they are because they are standing in front of a ink blot screaming, “What is it, what is it going to look like!” When really the ink is still ink.
But what I was saying in my initial comment, however crudely you may feel it is, is the Internet is not the end all, you know? It seems so massive that it will crush everything in its path, so we should all just accept it and wire in and just go. I disagree. I want to not type OMG and then hear a girl on the street say OMG to my face. That shit is fucking annoying, no matter how you slice it. The restructuring of language due to the Internet is fascinating, yes, and I do not reject it, I just don’t assimilate it utterly into my way of speech, because then you are leaving one arena to join another and sacrificing. I’d rather live with the Internet/Tech than live in it.
And this is coming from a certified computer tech.
“notion of legitimacy” <-- this sentiment is pretty much why i couldn't be arsed to read much past z.smith's "i was at harvard when this all happened, yall" point in her article. i also happen to like 1000% agree with you re: writers who likely couldn't tell you what the difference between the Internet and Wifi is mouthing off on all things 'e-'. that said, i need to see this damned movie already. also, gotta love this quotable from the gCEO: "The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had."
hi zusey –
i agree with you here on several points
1) z. smith’s very early “i was at harvard when this all happened…” Really Put Me Off too (although i will admit to wanting to know who the teeny tiny walking followed famous actress was – natalie portman maybe?)
2) i have often think of the internet as an experiment (or my own personal experiment about my own experience on it – this reply to you is an experiment of sorts i suppose)
3) yes, you need to see this movie already!
yes, i have often think!
princess padme and upcoming sapphic ballerina was my guess too. w/r/t to the internet as experiment, i just hope it all works out, whatever the ‘experiment’ is, and that people’s lives generally improve whatever the result. though the net is already being put to some rather orwellian uses in developing countries for me to be overly optimistic about its world changing aspects. and i suppose i’ll get around to downloading the S.N. eventually.
Use autocorrect and have the best of both worlds. everyone. Make it so you type “u” and your device will automatically change it to “you”… “bc” becomes “because”… “w” and “wo” become “with” and “without”… life is slightly improved in this manner.
mj, zork, the balance of the both of you have it right.
Zadie Smith surely doesn’t get it. Zork is partly right about how the internet is viewed– we need to consider it as it’s own entity, the world’s greatest rhizome, and there are possibilities in those connections, and what is of the web, whether it is language or community or culture, needs to be considered on its own terms, not as derivative or mirroring, but as distinct and important. Zadie Smith is a little too get off my lawn, a little too generation-last, to be able to understand this point.
But when it comes to literature and writing, Zork, mj has it more right than you do: the language conventions of text, or of online communities coming from places like 4chan (gamers of a different generation than I am– and I’d guess, than you both are, Zork and mj), do not and should not significantly affect written communication beyond online interaction or cell phone applications. (I like that I cannot decide whether to capitalize zork and mj, or go with the rendering in the comment string– case in point here). The comment strings of HTMLGIANT, dandy and pleasing and playful; the grammar of sentences intended to communicate complex concepts, let alone the grammar of sentences in a story that has artistic aspirations, not so much. The use of such language as its own language in a piece of art, that’s fine. But otherwise, the merit of literature as literature has very, very little to do with where it appears, and since grammar allows meaning, we require it wherever. Smith’s attitude about texting, as was pointed out earlier, is about how she tends to consider language; writers of a younger generation, especially those who haunt this corner of the interweb, don’t need Smith’s snobbery about text shorthand, but they’d do well to recognize her serious reverence for language and literature. Just because there is an internet and you can publish shit on on your blog, or in an online magazine run by your friends, or even in an online magazine where the content is comparably excellent to what you’d get in TNY or The Atlantic (um, there’s good stuff out there– Narrative, Guernica, even The Collagist or the online Triquarterly or _______ are all really good– but are they, in aggregate quality, EQUAL to the best print venues yet?) doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily deserving of respect, or that you ought to get paid for it. What matters is in part how good it is, in part the regressive attitude that still exists toward the online, in part the fact that the internet has enabled a proliferation of writers writing and e-publishing (and some is great, and on the whole, in accumulation, there’s more bad out there), and in large part, as mj noted, the fact that we’re in a time of transition. Publishing and journalism haven’t caught up with the changes forced by the internet; we don’t have ways of sifting the volume of work; we don’t have effective re-hierarchization (what’s good, and what isn’t?); we don’t have effective monetization. Things are more democratic, but right now, it’s democracy without institutions, and presents more like anarchy. In the current chaos, well, it’s hard to thrive as a writer, sure. But it’s always been tough, and I don’t think that it’s the old people and their unenlightened attitude toward the interweb, let alone the misguided pronouncements of Zadie Smith, that are keeping online writers from the bounty to be gained in mining their (rich) writerly talents.
In regards to 4chan and all the other unmitigated shit online, I think you’re completely correct. I think that sort of online communication, as whole, is a net loss for the art of public discourse. Though I don’t think that the Internet is necessarily the root cause, but it certainly holds a certain amount of the blame. Rather, I think that the Internet provided a more public venue for the sort of people who already liked to fling shit or troll or share cartoon porn or whatever. The popularity of such venues then created an ideal that like-minded individuals then wanted to attain. It’s the ugly side of the democratic function of the Internet; cesspits of ignorance and trollish behavior gain a much more prominent and visible place in public discourse. And we all suffer.
To your other point about the quality of online literature (versus online communication), you say “um, there’s good stuff out there– Narrative, Guernica, even The Collagist or the online Triquarterly or _______ are all really good– but are they, in aggregate quality, EQUAL to the best print venues yet?”
To answer your question, I don’t know. But my question is, how does one determine that quality? We get back to the fact that the perceived “quality” of print publications, over that of online publications, in a large part comes from the legitimacy granted by publishing companies.
For the general consumer, the primary value of publishing companies is their function as a filter. As a consumer, there is a certain amount of trust that when I pick up a book from a major publishing house there will be a certain level of quality to the work. Not just sophistication of writing, but also that of editing. I expect the work to be grammatically correct and free of typos (things that are especially NOT guaranteed in regards to online content). However, as I reader, I’ve found such guarantees of quality to be on the decline. More and more, I notice work that is poorly edited, with typos, etc. More and more, I feel that the quality of work, in terms of style, sophistication, etc., is lacking. If then, the major publishing houses no longer perform a function as a filter, what is a reader to do? In other words, if major publishing houses can no longer ensure the legitimacy of their own production, how can they be expected to ensure the quality of online work? Actually, I don’t want them to. Online literature has its own set of problems, lack of a quality filter being one of them, but I don’t think the situation will be improved by subsuming the entire field under the legitimacy of major publishing houses. Online content producers, like Diagram, Guernica, etc., need to gain their own legitimacy equal to that of major publishing houses, while staying separate from them.
And finally, to the admittedly deserved flak I’m getting for my snark on Zadie Smith’s texting, I use proper punctuation in my texting, so there’s a great deal of hypocrisy there. I understand how Smith’s care for language would translate to her texting, but I think that she comes off as pretentious, because it misses the point of text communication. It’s like praising the Beckettian minimalism of telegrams.
i was unaware that something could be “objectively delightful.” good to know.
I think this review/essay is spot on, although she errs on the generational angle somewhat. Facebook was created in part by Zuckerberg (Gen Y), but its hundreds of millions of users are not all Gen Y, obviously, including Zadie Smith, who is being coy when she writes that “I must be in Mark Zuckerberg’s generation…but somehow it doesn’t feel that way”, because she is firmly Gen X, by birth (1975) and worldview. Nevertheless, her criticisms ring true across generational lines when it comes to users, even when she prognosticates: “Maybe [Facebook Connect] will be like an intensified version of the Internet I already live in, where ads for dental services stalk me from pillar to post and I am continually urged to buy my own books. Or maybe the whole Internet will simply become like Facebook: falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous.”